Outsiders often bounce off Paris’s surface — something I experienced when I was a foreign correspondent there a decade ago. The social networks built up by the French at school can persist at university and carry through to work, creating an impenetrable knot for newcomers. At least that was my excuse for the woeful lack of dinner party invitations I received when I was living there; I’m sure Parisians had their own reasons — ones that were perhaps less consoling to my eggshell ego.

Qihua Wang is obviously faring a lot better than I ever did. A student on the MSc in Management programme at France’s Essec business school — and a settled Parisian — she is something of an advert for the cross-border movement of talent in an age when the globalisation of professional careers is under threat from political isolationism and slower economic growth.

The 24-year-old Wang’s knack is partly a result of taking things slowly. Having studied for a degree in English literature at Tsinghua University in Beijing, she worked out that a higher degree in the arts might be a little too abstract. She instead cast her eye over masters courses in both management and finance in the UK, the US and France. She opted for Essec, partly because she wanted to learn a new language, partly because it allowed her to spread the course over several years, aiding her French assimilation.